Calder felt a flash of irritation. Sloppy, very sloppy. “I want you to send personnel into the fields. Sweep the area. I want a full count. They’re to put flag markers next to the bodies so we can see them from here. I want to define a solid perimeter around the effect.”
Ingram’s mouth tightened. “If you think the situation warrants it.”
Calder didn’t bother to answer that. He changed his tone. “Any theories on the cause?”
“No. This is a HAARP facility. We don’t work with gas or chemical weapons of any kind. There’s nothing like that within a hundred miles. There were no accidents in Gakona, Guikana, or Chistochina, nothing. We’ve swept the area for radiation; it’s clean. We checked with civilian and military flight command: there was no traffic through this airspace last night except for a few small civilian craft, none of them carrying any kind of chemicals or reporting anything usual. There’s been some mild stomach upset among our personnel, but nothing you can put your finger on. No ill effects reported in the neighboring towns. The birds were migrating, so something might have happened further up the line. We’re checking on it.”
Calder nodded, deciding Ingram wasn’t a slouch after all. He wasn’t surprised by anything Ingram said. If it had been a matter of gas or radiation, he wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t discover anything farther up the line, either. A flock of birds wouldn’t fly a hundred miles while poisoned before all collapsing simultaneously… at a HAARP facility.
Calder felt excitement stirring in his groin. Fuck. Avery would have loved this.
“I want ten of the bodies packed on ice and shipped to D.C. Here’s the address.” He took a card almost as plain as his own from a pocket and handed it to the colonel. “I want them there by tomorrow morning.”
“We do have some medical personnel here, if you’d like us to—”
“No. Thank you. The rest should be collected and buried. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to go over the details of your HAARP transmissions for the past few days.”
“That can be arranged.” Colonel Ingram hesitated. “But, begging your pardon, the HAARP broadcasts wouldn’t have anything to do with this. They’re just radio signals.”
Calder pretended to think it over, turning his head to survey the scene once more. In reality, he was buying time to swallow the anticipation he knew would be audible in his voice.
“Quite right, Colonel,” he said flatly. “Could you introduce me to your head physicist now please?”
Ingram hesitated, trying again to read him, but Calder gave back nothing. Ingram nodded and took Calder over to the Northern Exposure clones. They stopped in front of a man with John Lennon glasses and longish gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. The man looked at Calder with bored, disrespectful eyes, as if thinking, Oh, great, a jarhead.
Calder smiled.
“Lieutenant Farris, this is Dr. Serin,” Ingram said.
8.2. Jill Talcott
Things started going bad in October. The summer had been blissfully uneventful, with no one disturbing them and so much work getting accomplished. Of course, the campus was mostly dormant during the summer months. It couldn’t last.
They had finished with the one pulse in mid-September, just before the start of the new quarter. Jill had a bet going with Nate that the effects of the negative one pulse would mirror the effects of the one pulse, that the one-minus-one’s crests and troughs were two ends of energy in the same force. Nate disagreed; he thought the negative one pulse would have the opposite effect.
It looked like he’d win that bet. They reset the transmitter for the negative one pulse at 50 percent power. After only six days they started to see a definite decline in their daily “health and well-being” numbers. The virus stopped growing, then began to shrink, dying off around the edges. The mice were lethargic. The fruit rotted.
Deep in her own little world, Jill hadn’t bothered to read departmental memos lately, including one requesting research plans for the quarter. On a cold and rainy autumn Wednesday, Dick Chalmers called her into his office.
“Shut the door, Jill.”
She was vexed to see Chuck Grover. He was seated in a cross-legged Alan Alda kind of pose, not unlike a probation officer at a hearing. She frowned at him and he met her gaze with eyes as remote and cold as a Himalayan spring.
Chalmers motioned her to take a seat. He was not sitting behind his desk but on a padded chair in front of the desk, like Grover. A third, empty chair had been arranged so that the three roughly formed a circle. Jill’s hackles were up at once.
“What are you working on, Jill?” Chalmers asked.
“What is this, Dick?”
“This is a civilized discussion.” Chalmers spoke in that heavy, paternal, Marcus Welby way of his. “I haven’t had a research plan from you in six months. I want to know what you’re doing.”
“What’s he doing here?” Jill looked daggers at Grover.
Chalmers neatly picked some lint off his slacks, giving her time to fully comprehend the seriousness of his expression.
“Chuck would also like to know what you’re doing. He asked me, which made me realize I haven’t a clue. I don’t like not having a clue about my staff, Jill.”
Her hands found each other in her lap and began entwining. “You do know what my work is about.”
“I know what it was about, but no, I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re working on now.”
“Well…” She was going to say she was still working on the same old wave mechanics equation; that’s what she’d led Chalmers to believe. But she’d told Grover she’d abandoned that. It takes social dexterity to be a very good liar, and Jill didn’t have a prayer. “Um, well, I’m still working on wave mechanics, but we’ve had to go back to scratch and try a new angle on it. And… uh… well, it’s just a different approach.”
Chalmers and Grover were both looking at her with slack faces. Chalmers shook his fleshy head. “I’m sorry, but that simply doesn’t cut it. What about this lab you’ve requisitioned down in Smith Hall?”
“Yeah. What, exactly, are you doing down there?” Grover added.
She swallowed, not knowing what to say.
“I had a call from the HAARP program in Alaska,” Chalmers remarked. “Apparently, someone calling herself Dr. Alkin and claiming to be from our department contacted them last summer about high-energy wave experiments. I’ve asked around, but none of the other professors know anything about it.”
“Well, I certainly don’t,” Jill lied. She could feel her face heating up and got irritated. She might as well have a nose that grew, for god’s sake.
Grover’s eyes narrowed. He leaned forward, practically sniffing her. “What about that book on radio generators I saw in your office?”
“That was… Nate’s. My grad student’s. Hobby.”
“Dr. Talcott…” Chalmers shook his head again and took off his glasses. Jill knew she was in trouble then. He never called her Dr. Talcott. “I’m mystified as to why anyone needs to waste a single second speculating about what you might or might not be doing. You told Chuck you’d keep him up-to-date on your progress after using Quey, but he says you’ve refused to even be civil.”
That pissed Jill off, big-time. Not civil! She’d been perfectly civil to the creep the day she showed him the sim program. She’d lied her head off, but she’d been civil.
“That’s absolutely not true,” she said in an icy voice.
Grover started to argue, but Chalmers held up a mediating hand.